Darcus Howe & David Lammy #Londonriots

Darcus Howe is a writer and broadcaster.

Howe organized the 20,000 strong Black People's March in 1981 claiming official neglect and inefficient policing of the investigation of the New Cross fire in which 13 black teenagers died.

More after the jump…

Is It Wrong to Talk About Michelle Obama's Body?

Talking Heads: Born Under Punches (courtesy of Captain Crates)
Remain In Light (Sire, 1980)

No synopsis for this article (eff that/read this one wholly):


AlterNet article by Tamura Lomax, RH Reality Check. Posted November 22, 2008:

A recent Salon article declared 'First Lady Got Back.' Does the piece tap into racist assumptions about black women's sexuality?

The recent cacophonous chorus surrounding Michelle Obama's derriere is undeniably troubling. Yet, to be quite honest, it is also strangely gratifying to me. I recently read Salon's feature piece "First Lady Got Back." Taken aback by the implicit oxymoron between the words, "First Lady" and "Got Back," I sat for hours pondering all that this cluster of words signified. For instance, what does it mean to place "first lady," which designates a "respectable" social position, with "Got Back," a sexist epithet coined by rapper, Sir Mix-a-Lot, in his hot song, "Baby Got Back," in the early 90's? And, what does it mean to inscribe these words onto the body of our very first African American First Lady?

The deployment of both "lady" and "back" can be viewed as problematic. First, discourses about mythologized "ladies" didn't initially include black women. A "lady" was a woman or wife who innately possessed such virtues as delicacy, piety, beauty, politeness and gentleness. Black women, who were not seen as "ladies," "women" or wives, were historically not privy to such designation. Historically speaking, this was a term reserved for white women. And let me just say upfront, this was not necessarily a compliment. As I understand it, "lady" was just as imprisoning as the more derogatory terms used for black female slaves -- just in a different way.

Secondly, there is a long history of discourses regarding harmfully reductive views of black women's "backs." Black women have been pathologized and objectified because of their "backs," which, by the way, come in all shapes and sizes just like those of other men and women. Sir Mix-a-Lot's hit song, "Baby Got Back," was only the tip of the iceberg. The cultural chorus regarding black women's bodies, particularly their fragmented backside, had been singing for centuries. Sir Mix-a-Lot simply joined in. Or did he?

To be sure, the mass production of "Baby Got Back" via radio and television took ongoing essentialist discourses about black female hyper-sexuality to new dimensions. The constant reproduction of the gyrating images became a source of social studies on black female sexuality. This was obviously deeply problematic. However, as stereotypically reductive as this song and video was, in its own way, it also celebrated black women's bodies. Sure, this so-called celebration reproduced every stereotype about black female sexuality possible. And, by fetishizing black women's privates, reduced them to mere objects, namely their butts. This was absolutely damaging. However, it also did something else. Through the process of representation (via video imaging), which presented black women's butts as evidence of stereotypical difference (regarding black female sexuality), many black women, including myself, strangely found a sense of pride in our bodies, specifically our butts. Thus, while Sir Mix-a-Lot (and others) reassigned mythical legacies to our behinds, some black women were re-imagining themselves as subjects with beautiful bodies.

However, it is important to realize that this was not everyone's experience. Nor was it likely the experience of those like Sir Mix-a-Lot who commodified black women's bodies for his own use and enjoyment. Nor is it likely the experience of many of those who have joined in the chorus regarding Michelle Obama's butt. Deployment of terms such as "lady" and "back," without some sort of critical analysis is irresponsible at best, particularly in reference to black women. Even if Obama's butt makes us beam with pride every time her beautiful body sashays center stage, we cannot ignore the effects of the obvious "blackening" of the already historically brimming noun, "lady," when placed together in a title like "First Lady Got Back." There are serious implications to consider here, namely the pathologization of our first African-American "First Lady."

In short, if we are not more careful in our utilization of language and not more forthright in our criticisms of the language of others, we run the risk of reinforcing historical ideals of black female sexual savagery at the highest level. This is very dangerous. So, if Michelle Obama's body makes us proud, why not shape our enthusiasm with a critique of the status quo, which continues to treat her as an object by fragmenting her to her parts? Obama is a subject -- more than a body, and, more than a butt. Inscribing her with words without carefully evaluating their operation first is beyond distressing. It is death dealing. Not just to her, but to all women.


+Luddite In Chief l Why Barack Obama Should Keep His BlackBerry: Slate

Idaho Students Chant l 'Assassinate Obama'

CLD PRSS

Madison County, Idaho was once dubbed "the reddest place in America" by Salon, but that didn't make it any less shocking when elementary school children allegedly started chanting "assassinate Obama" on the school bus.

Matthew Whoolery told KIKD News he found out about the chanting from his second and third graders, who had no idea what the word "assassinate" meant.


Rhetorical: Has Obama become an effigy at the behest of elementary school students or are school children, as they often do, mimicking their parents who joke (?) with race and terrorism? For this I request that the Phantom Band chime in: No More Fooling (courtesy of Bumrocks). WTF??!!!

Killer Mike on Sean Bell

Per XXL's print magazine of Sept. 2008: The Year of POLITICS & BULLSH#T:

Killer Mike was asked the following question regarding the April 25, 2008 acquitytal of the three NYPD officers involved in the 2006 shooting death of Sean Bell:

What was your logical and emotional reaction when you heard about the acquittals?

I wish them death, and I hope they get cancer, and I hope it's incurable, and I hope their family has to watch them die a slow death. That's my natural reaction, seriously.

Kevin Powell: The Sean Bell Tragedy

I Am Sean Bell

Below find excerpts of AHH: Kevin Powell: The Sean Bell Tragedy, published Saturday, April 26, 2008 4:19 PM.

Kevin Powell is a Brooklyn, New York-based writer, community activist, and author of eight books.

... But I knew this verdict was coming. I have lived in New York City for nearly two decades and, before that, worked as a news reporter for several publications throughout the city’s five boroughs, and I cannot begin to tell you how many cases of police brutality and police misconduct I covered or witnessed, more often than not a person of color on the receiving end: Eleanor Bumpurs ... Michael Stewart … Amadou Diallo ... Sean Bell.

This is not to suggest that all police officers are trigger-happy and inhumane, because I do not believe that. They have a difficult and important job, and many of them do that job well, and maintain outstanding relationships with our communities. I know officers like that. But what I am saying is that New York, America, this society as a whole, still views the lives of Black people, of Latino people, of people of color, of women, of poor or working-class people, as less than valuable. It does not matter that two of the three officers charged in the Sean Bell case were officers of color and one White. What matters is the mindset of racism that permeates the New York Police Department, and far too many police departments across America. Shooting in self-defense is one thing, but it is never okay to shoot first and ask questions later, not even if a police officer “feels” threatened, not even if the source of that “feeling” is a Black or Latino person.

That is a twisted logic deeply rooted in the America social fabric, dating back to the founding fathers and their crazy calculations about slaves being three-fifths of a human being.

“I Am Sean Bell,” many of us chanted in the days and weeks immediately following his death. Yet very few of us showed up to the hearings after, and even fewer had the courage to question the vision, or lack thereof, of our own Black leadership who accomplished, ultimately, little to nothing at all. And very few of us realized that the powers-that-be in New York City have come to anticipate our reactions to matters like the Sean Bell tragedy: we get upset and become very emotional; we scream “No Justice! No Peace!”; we march, rally, and protest; we call the police and mayor all kinds of names and demand their resignations; we vow that this killing will be the last; and we will wait until the next tragedy hits, then this whole horrible cycle begins anew.

And a long as we have leadership, White leadership and Black leadership, mainstream leadership and grassroots leadership, that can do nothing more than exacerbate folks’ very natural emotions in a tragedy like this, we will never progress as a human race. … So many of us, especially us Black and Latino males, will continue to have a very nervous relationship with the police, even the police of color, for fear that any of one of us could be the next Sean Bell.

+Activists, Rappers React To Sean Bell Verdict: AHH
+Legislators Say Sean Bell Shooting Case Not Closed: Alternet

Person Kevin Powell

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Political Jay-Z?

Ready for change?
Depends on the change(s).

The Last Poets: Black Woman
Right On! (Juggernaut, 1968)

+A Vote of Allegiance?

For the full article by DeNeen L. Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer from Monday, March 24, 2008; C01: Washington Post l Playahata

In the Obama-Clinton Battle, Race & Gender Pose Two Great Divides for Black Women

Woman has an ocean of wrongs too deep for any plummet, and the Negro, too, has an ocean of wrongs that cannot be fathomed. There are two great oceans; in the one is the black man, and in the other is the woman. . . . I will be thankful in my soul if any body can get out of the terrible pit."

-- Lucy Stone, 19th-century abolitionist and suffragist, after women were excluded from the 15th Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote.

The "isms" have once again been pitted against each other. Sexism or racism -- which ism is deepest? All things being equal, should a woman or a black man be lifted to the presidency? Which "first" is the imperative first?

The admonitions of white feminists urging black women to vote gender over race have cracked open a scab, a festering sore, that had crusted over the history of this country's competing isms. A scab that covered the lingering tension between some white feminists and some black women, with their dual historic burden of race and gender. It is black women, after all, who have faced both sexism and racism in their lives.

In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, which ism goes first? Some women fear the question, say it is divisive, explosive, should never be asked. But it has been asked -- in the recent writings of feminists including Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan. The question is ripe, reeling under the surface, discussed with muffled outrage by black women grown weary of white feminists seeming to tell them what to do.

BTW
Eff that too…